Friday, 11 November 2011

*** UPDATE - In all the excitement of having actually won an award I totally forgot to mention below that we also recieved a "Highly Commended" in the Multi-Platform category (which means we were within 3% of the win!) - awesome huh! ***

Well, it's time for an admission...

In the 8 years that Kempt has been running (6 of those specialising solely in games) we've been horrifically unlucky with awards. We've had something in excess of 40 serious nominations (i.e. in proper, credible national/international awards) and, I can now admit, we've never won a single one.

UNTIL NOW THAT IS!!!

Yes, finally, the curse has been been broken! Last night we picked up our first proper award at the BIMAs for our magnum opus Red Bull Kart Fighter in the "Engagement" category. Our awards shelf now looks like this:

It would be really hard for me to overstate how much this means to me and, I hope, all of the team. Although we all love what we do and feel privileged to do it I think it's fair to say that it's been a bit of a labour of love too. Having been the bridesmaid on so many occasions was beginning to get a bit wearing on the team - despite having more nominations than we've ever had, I don't think any of them really expected us to win! So... this feels good, finally a stamp of approval from our peers that what we do is genuinely brilliant. I'm therefore hugely grateful to BIMA and the esteemed judges for giving us this recognition.

The night itself was also a triumph, the event followed the informal format which we introduced in 2009 when I chaired the awards and gives, I think, the event a really unique edge (although I'm also sure it creates a few issues for the events team, sorry Jim).

Thanks to our good friends at Red Bull we had a special version of Red Bull Kart Fighter at the event running on a touch screen. It allowed users to pick a kart to play as and then if their kart won then £10 was donated to BIMA's schools initiatives. At the end of the night it had raised just under £800, thanks to Tim et al for that!

Finally, at the end of the night, 50-60 of us adjourned to Karaoke Box just across the road to see out the night in style (and very, very noisily indeed) This felt like a really fitting end to the evening and I was really pleased to see so many of my good friends from the industry there. I feel very grateful for having met so many amazing people through my career and to have such a large number of them in one place to celebrate with us was truly an honour, thanks to all of you that came.

Finally, my personal highlight has to be the rendition of "Rusty Cage" Mr Fryer and I belted out at about ten to three just before jumping in a cab home, job done I think, can't wait for the next one!